Young and Crazy

[SoDesuKa]

It doesn't seem possible that James Holmes was as crazy as he seems to be, and nobody noticed. Maybe people felt uncomfortable around him, enough that mentors or professors suggested he take some time off to consider whether he ought to pursue an isolated lifestyle like that of a research scientist.

Of course, the same questions were asked about Ted Kaczinski, whether higher mathematics made him something of an oddball in itself. The U.C. Berkeley Math Department quickly denounced the idea as preposterous. Was Cho - the VT shooter - also in a somewhat isolated academic field? Seems to me he was some kind of esoteric engineer.

Thesis - young and crazy males escape notice when they're in fields that attract loners, whether math or neuroscience or esoteric engineering. I'm not arguing the point, just raising it. The more that comes out about Holmes, the loonier he gets, and the more likely, it would seem, that somebody noticed.

[Fumesucker]

1. Thinking about our society too much will drive you around the bend..

We do so many, many things that are absolutely nuts when viewed objectively, America is not a happy place for people who look beyond the surface of things and are not satisfied with pop culture or pat answers.

And no, I'm not being sarcastic.

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. Is that what happened to me? I think so.

The thing is that I'm the happiest person I know despite the fact that the entire nation went batshit crazy.

[BlueToTheBone]

3. Staying grounded in the center of your own

being will do that for you.

[Lurks Often]

4. I think people may have noticed that Holmes was a little different,

but I doubt it ever got to the level where he could have been forced to seek help or involuntarily committed. He was certainly smart enough given his education and he apparently planned this for months, so I doubt he said or did anything that would have made somebody consider going to the authorities about him.

The brutal truth is that these tragedies are going to occur and there probably isn't anything we as a country can do to stop these that would either be acceptable to the vast majority of Americans or allowable under our current legal system.

[MineralMan]

5. I think we all know people who are off-center, in terms

of behaving close to what is considered normal. They're loners, painfully shy, hold unusual ideas, or have any of many other characteristics that set them apart. We sometimes befriend them, and we sometimes avoid them. They work where we work, go to school where we go to school, or live near where we live. Sometimes, we're related to them.

What we don't normally do is expect that they will engage in mass murder. Such people are exceedingly rare, and making the inference that someone who is outside of typical patterns is likely to engage in violence isn't a logical inference.

Yes, we notice unusual people, but we pretty much allow them to be unusual. Given the rarity of incidents like Aurora, why should we do anything differently?